Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday March 22, 2013 @11:23AM
from the government-smells-funding dept.

Newsubmitter davek writes with news that the U.S. will be applying money-laundering laws to Bitcoin and other 'virtual currencies.'"The move means that firms that issue or exchange the increasingly popular online cash will now be regulated in a similar manner as traditional money-order providers such as Western Union Co. WU +0.17% They would have new bookkeeping requirements and mandatory reporting for transactions of more than $10,000. Moreover, firms that receive legal tender in exchange for online currencies or anyone conducting a transaction on someone else's behalf would be subject to new scrutiny, said proponents of Internet currencies. 'I think it's inevitable that just like you have U.S. dollars used by thieves and criminals, it's sadly inevitable you will have criminals use a virtual currency. We want to work with authorities,' said Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin developer. Still, law enforcement, regulators and financial institution have expressed worries about the hard-to-trace attributes of virtual currencies, helping trigger this week's move from the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCen."

Bitcoin works? Here I thought it was just good for giving you heatstroke, buying child porn or drugs, and breaking when there are more than about 70,000 transactions across the network per day (compared to Visa's 300 million). The currency of the future, ladies and gentlemen!

Nota bene: I would have mentioned buying slim jims and ramen, but the self-made captains of industry running Bitmunchies weren't able to turn enough of a profit and shut down. Speaking of Bitcoin businesses, how's Roger Ver's Bitcoin store doing? Still about $600,000 shy of the $850,000 it'll need to make in Q1? Up, up, up!

If the average user can't exchange bitcoins for dollars, what good is it?

Finally someone gets it, and explains why the EU is failing. All those people earning and spending euros, never converting them to dollars, wasting their time, getting nothing out of it. Don't they understand? If they don't convert to dollars, they're useless. Fortunately for the euro, they can convert to dollars, but so few europeans take advantage of this to validate to the euro. Thus, it never gains legitimacy.

Not really, USD are taken by anybody in the US that lends money as well as for taxes. BTC are basically just useful by a small number of people that aren't very good at math. The rest of us stick to currency and barter of things that actually exist.

Now, if BTC was a mandatory option for payment and was likely to continue that way into the future, then it would be a closer analogy. But, even there with the fixed maximum supply and the curve at which they're being introduced, being what they are, even then it would be a stretch.